Week 32

No news from SCI, but a few random thoughts in my head to share. Have been quite busy with the remaining preparations. Most of the shopping for the major baby items are done. Still need to pick up a few smaller things. I have to say the hardest decision was buying a double stroller. As other parents can attest, you would need at least two sets of car seats and two sets of strollers for babies throughout their childhood. The choices for double strollers get limited and can get expensive compared to single strollers.  After lots of research and visiting baby stores, we finally decided to start with a simple "Universal Baby Trend Snap N Go" stroller, where you can easily snap two infant car seats into it. Hopefully after a few months when we don't need to snap car seats into the stroller, we will buy them a double stroller (hopefully City Select or City Mini). Funny how these days I turn my head on streets when I see strollers, not only to check out the stroller, but also the babies inside! :)

In past few months we have got many great advice from parents from all walks of life. Interestingly we find many contradictions. What works for one parent may not work for another. For example, our neighbor keeps swearing the diaper genie is a must-have, whereas I hear from others it's waste of money! At the end of the day we have to assess each item to see if we really need it. We tend to lean towards the advice of other twin parents, specially those in NYC because they share similar challenges.  In past few months our good friend Stacey, an SCI mom, has been so helpful with her advice on so many things including stroller and car seats. I have relied quite bit on her because she has twins via surrogacy, and they live in a small apartment like ours.

Since we live in a two-bedroom small apartment in Brooklyn, at this point we are only buying things for newborns / infants below 6 months. For examples, we are starting with a mini crib and will eventually buy two cribs once the babies get bigger. That should give us time to make room and do the research and also knowing the gender will be helpful in making decisions later on. Definitely raising kids in a big city like NYC is quite challenging as space is limited. I love this storage ad that I recently saw in Manhattan:

Last week my sister and her family visited us from California (the Bay Area), and it was so wonderful spending time with my nephew and niece one last time before becoming parents. Those kids have been a major reason for us to pursue parenthood, and we would always love them and cherish the relationship we have with them even after we have our own kids, although I know we won't have as much time for them as we used to.  This weekend my sister surprised us by announcing that she's expecting her third baby in January! So I am thrilled our twins will have a cousin their age to play with :) My sister and I are only 16 months apart so growing up we were very close like twins. So in a way it's nice to have kids in the same age so we can share the experience. We were joking that once we all get together next year, people might think our kids are triplets! :) Interestingly we have about 7 friends from various cities that are pregnant within few months of us. This is in addition to all the friends expecting via surrogacy. So we should have plenty of support as we go through this journey.

Our next scan is due in 10 days. Time is flying fast. We are now focusing on buying a car, hotel and airline reservation. October 11 is supposed to be my last day at work.  Have a great September everyone.